Don’t get me wrong – I love London, and still have an apartment there.
If you want to know why the coast is such an inspirational place, ask Herman Melville, Jack London, Nordhoff and Hall, Robert Louis Stevenson or Joseph Conrad. It’s a glimpse of eternity. It invites rumination, the relentless whisper of the tide against the shore.
London and L.A. are two opposites – I like the difference.
When I come to London, I always like to see what’s playing at the NFT.
Short of being prime minister there isn’t a better job in British politics than running London.
I studied for my degree in London and consequently ended up spending five years away from Cornwall. I deliberately moved away from the coast to experience a different way of life.
To discuss a Martin Amis book, you must first discuss the orchestrated release of a Martin Amis book. In London, which rightly prides itself on the vibrancy of its literary cottage industry, Amis is the Steve Jobs of book promoters, and his product rollouts are as carefully managed as anything Apple dreams up.
I can’t switch time zones any more. London is one of my favourite places, but I’m always so zonked that I can’t appreciate it. It’s like a six-inch sheet of glass between me and Charing Cross Road.
I grew up in Oldham and moved to Manchester and London. I didn’t go to drama school. I just did a B-Tech.
Immigrant communities have been genuinely accepted in London.
I never get recognised here in London, which I like. Once a year, someone comes up to me and asks if I am ‘so-and-so’s niece’ because they think they recognise me from somewhere. I like that.
I don’t get recognised in London or at home either – very seldom anyway. Either that or I look so crazy no one wants to come up to me.
I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.
I suppose in London they all drink from the same watering holes.
There’s all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it’s a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society.
